Busted!: Drug War Survival Skills and True Dope D

GETTING WASTED IN THE DRUG WAR

A drug bust is one of life’s defining moments. More expensive than your wedding. More painful than your divorce. More permanent than your tats, and harder to live down than a fat mullet and a piano tie. There’s your mug shot floating around like a turd on the Internet as your first Google hit. Maybe there’ll be a video of you on Cops shouting slurred obscenities and staggering through your DUI drills. And there will always be the haunting memories of your strip search and the cold sweat at the sight of latex gloves.

Don’t believe that just because you don’t get high and never DUI you won’t get busted. The Drug War is all around you. Americans spend over $65 billion getting wasted on illegal drugs every year, $75 billion on booze, and $3 billion on good-time pills. Throw in another billion or so for some bongs and you have got yourself a party, my man. You could be at the wrong little get-wasted-together, in the wrong ride, in the wrong hood, living with the wrong roommate, or piss off the wrong cop, and find yourself peeing in a corner on Rikers Island for a long weekend before you’ve been charged with anything.

The good news is that you have wisely set yourself apart from the unsober masses by purchasing this book, putting a defense attorney in your corner to advise you before you throw (or go to) the Hard-core House Party, before you Pack for Your Drug Trip, before you Hook a Brother Up, before you’re nabbed in the Dopemobile, before you take that Drug Test?, and before you’re Face-to-Face with the Fuzz.

Expert counsel before you really need it.

Some of you, alas, will get nabbed anyway. During this dark period, Busted! will be your personal Jesus, shepherding you from the bust to the bang of the judge’s gavel. From enduring your night(s) in jail to picking a drug-bust attorney to throwing yourself on the ground and groveling for mercy and/or fighting your bust like a stone-cold pro: Rush Limbaugh. A man whose pain and humiliation brought such joy to so many will serve as a guest guru, dropping the deep drug-bust knowledge of the rich and famous that any burnout can grasp between bong hits.

SEX AND DRUGS

THE BUSTED! PHILOSOPHY

Sex and drugs have always gone hand in hand, and there have always been a lot of laws and (re)education aimed at getting the people to stop screwing willy-nilly and stop doing so many drugs. But, try and try, nothing seems to work. Everyone keeps fucking and everyone keeps doing dope.

Sex education has been forced to acknowledge this painfully obvious reality and has grudgingly turned the focus toward condoms. The time has come for drug-bust education, beginning with acknowledging the obvious: People are going to do drugs. Whatever the merits of the Drug War, there can be no debate about whether locking people up has been effective at quenching Americans’ thirst for a good buzz. It hasn’t. It never will. Mankind has been getting wasted since we crawled from the mud and realized that we are all in pain and going to die.

But Busted! isn’t about the futility of the Drug War. It’s about staying out of jail and out on bail. It’s about the bare-knuckle reality of the criminal justice system fighting a dirty war. Like all dirty wars, anything goes. Perjury, racism, public humiliation, and medieval punishment are all fair game.

Knowledge is your only defense.

Sex education still begins with abstinence—no question, always the best way not to contract some gnarly disease. Similarly, in the Drug War, the best way not to get busted is not to possess drugs. So don’t possess drugs. Drugs are bad. We all know that shit ain’t broccoli. The difference, in my view, between marijuana and the host of other available inebriants is like the difference between casual sex with a condom and barebacking transvestites in truck stops. But that’s your decision. A drug bust takes away all your decision-making authority, and wars are not about fighting fair. Bad things happen to people who get busted. Profoundly bad things. No matter what your dope of choice, the criminal justice system brings only pain and suffering. Consider the Busted! and Now We Bring the Pain chapters as warnings from God.

Part 1

HOW (NOT) TO

POSSESS DRUGS

From Your Ass to

Your Roommate’s Stash

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DRUG AND DRUG-PARAPHERNALIA POSSESSION

There are almost as many ways to get nabbed for possession as there are drugs to possess, and all methods offer the same result in the same order: bust, strip search, jail, body-cavity search (oh, yeah), guilty plea, more jail, criminal record. Rinse. Repeat if necessary.

Drug-possession law ought to be simple enough: Have drugs, will get busted. And it’s often that simple. But what if it’s just some stems and seeds, or some flaky white stuff in a Baggie? What if some bastard sold you a bag of baby powder and called it cocaine?

What about that dope you stashed in your girl’s panties? What if those are your panties? And who’s on the hook for the fat lines on the drafting table at the fashion show that just got busted? How about the fatty in the ashtray of the Cooper-nowhere-to-hide-Mini that just got pulled over? Or the weed growing in your roommate’s closet?

And how can you get busted on a paraphernalia charge when you bought that bong in a legit store and paid your damn sales tax? Maybe you just connected a friend to a source, or drove her to her dealer on your way to Sunday school. What do you mean she OD’d? Manslaughter?! All I did was pass on a beeper number! Maybe it’s time you went to the emergency room yourself?

My God, the dope is everywhere…. I’m going to need a lawyer.

BUT THOSE ARE JUST STEMS AND SEEDS, MAN!

Drugs do not necessarily have to be of sufficient quantity or quality to get you high to get you busted for possession. Flakes of coke, nine pot seeds, a single crystal of meth, baby marijuana plants, bong resin, and needles with traces of smack have all been enough dope to make the bust stick, so long as the bustee was aware that it was dope. Awareness is usually inferred by where the drugs were found. It’s assumed that you’re aware of what you’ve got in your drawers.

A very thin film of dust, comparable to one or two grains of salt:

As was the case with Mr. Scott, possession busts for not possessing drugs are most frequently visited upon those who are suspected of dealing and parolees caught with paraphernalia, or who flunk a drug test (see Drug Test?); but such busts are also visited upon those caught eating the stash, or who successfully flushed the bulk of the dope down the drain enraging the police and making them determined to bring the pain, one way or another (see Eating the Stash).

Some states require a usable amount of a narcotic, rather than a detectable amount. In those states, an expert will testify that although she never does dope, has never done dope, and hates everyone that does dope, the dope that you had was sufficient to have had an exciting effect and was therefore usable. The reality, though, is that any measurable amount is sufficient.

The lesson here is to lick your Baggies clean, throw them away, and break out the Dustbuster.

FOOL’S DOPE

So you went down to Washington Square Park and scored yourself a dime bag of parsley from the droopy Jamaican cat. Nice. Perhaps you paid some jittery basehead a hundred bucks at the circuit party for a couple of aspirins with happy faces. Can you get busted for parsley possession? Of course!

It’s the Drug War! It’s not supposed to be fair. In the drug-possession game, it’s buyer beware. You may get fugazied, but the judge will not pity you. In most states, you will get busted for attempted possession. The dirty deed is done as soon as you pay for what you thought was dope.

A fool’s dope bust will not usually befall you unless you score from a cop. (You can never trust those bastards.) If you’re nabbed doing a big bong hit of tobacco that you thought was herb, for example, the chances are good you won’t be prosecuted for giving yourself a migraine. But don’t count on it. (See Paraphernalia,)

Word to the Hustlers:

POSSESSING THE GOOD SHIT

When is an eight ball not an eight ball? When you buy retail. Not when you get busted. Eight balls that are in reality two balls—mostly baking soda and enough speed to give you a headache—are still eight balls in the criminal justice system. You will be charged with possessing an eighth of an ounce of coke. In general, anything that you were planning to snort, smoke, suck, or jam in your vein counts toward the total weight of the drug.

But the Drug War can always get you coming and going. The lower down the food chain you are, the lower the quality of your dope should be. So if you have some very good shit, the uncut stuff your typical work-hard-play-hard Wall Street junkie doesn’t come across, the DA will take that into account when he’s deciding whether to charge you with simple possession (bad) or possession with intent to distribute (much worse). The difference is usually about five years. The better the dope, the more years. So if you like your shit good, you’ve been warned. (To avoid distribution charges, aside from simply buying down-market, see If You’re Keeping Dope Around…,.)

MY PRECIOUS

Personal Dope Possession

Get busted with stems and seeds, or fool’s dope, or the good shit, and the DA is going to have to prove that you had knowledge and control of the drugs. When you actually have the drugs in your hands, in your backpack, or in your drawers, this is of course very easy to prove. For this reason, most of this chapter is devoted to keeping you from being the one that’s charged with possession at the party or out there on the Drug War highway to hell.

DOPE NOTE: YOU’LL NOTICE THAT ALL ADVICE IN BUSTED! IS SOLELY AND PATHOLOGICALLY ABOUT WHAT IS BEST FOR YOU. AS YOUR IN-HOUSE COUNSEL I’LL SAY NOW THAT THERE IS NO ROOM FOR HEROES IN THE DRUG WAR (SEE LIMBAUGH LESSON #6,). IN COURT, EVERYONE’S LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE.

BUT I WAS JUST PASSING THE PIPE, OFFICER!

One night in 1992, Wisconsin woman Denene McCuskey was passing the pipe around her car. A cop observed the warm glow, ran up to the car, grabbed the pipe, and busted her for possession, claiming that Denene had taken a hit. But the pipe was bone dry, Denene pointed out. So the DA took the pipe down to the lab and had it scraped for pot resin. When the lab techs found some, Denene was convicted and sentenced to a weekend in county jail and a $375 fine. (For what her long weekend was like, see Jail/Holding Cell Hell,)

As Ms. McCuskey might tell you, even if you were just passing the pipe, didn’t take a hit, didn’t intend to take a hit, and never intended to take a hit, you are holding the pipe, and it looks mighty suspicious. And even if you’re not actually caught pipe-handed, a determined DA will bust you on a stems-and-seeds charge for being in the vicinity of the pipe. Don’t believe it? It happens. It happened to Leonard Hironaka.

Diddly Dope Ditty:

FINGERPRINTS CANNOT BE LIFTED FROM WOODEN PIPES.

YEAH, BUT I WAS ONLY BORROWING THIS COCAINE, OFFICER!

Like most defenses when you’re caught red-handed, the momentary-innocent-possession defense is not very effective. And if you find your lawyer suggesting a just-borrowing-the-blow strategy like this you should seek new counsel pronto. Innocent, on-person possession of illegal drugs isn’t going to fly unless you were on the way to the precinct to have it incinerated. Hard to prove. The law recognizes that most people don’t abandon hard-earned drugs unless the cops are beating down the door, or when it’s time for rehab (see Limbaugh Lesson #4,).

Found some meth in your ride after Junior borrowed it? Flush it immediately. Every second that passes with the dope on your watch makes your innocent-possession defense less and less likely to fly. It probably won’t fly, though. Once you’re caught holding the bag, you’re in control of dem drugs. Your only hope is that you didn’t know about the stash Junior planted in your ride (see This Isn’t My Underwear! below).

Come Mr. Tally Man, Tally Me Bananas…

THIS ISN’T MY UNDERWEAR! THAT’S NOT MY COCAINE!

THE CLUELESS MULE

Attempting to explain away drug possession by denying any knowledge of the drugs in your possession is a ballsy, usually doomed defense. But if you do get nabbed dope-handed, the more you can plausibly distance yourself from it, the better your chances. Maybe that junkie maid packed your bags. Or you’re wearing your junkie roommate’s clothes. Or you borrowed that junkie’s car in which that junkie’s drugs were very well hidden. Something like that. Desperate defendants call for desperate defense strategies, and the sun shines on every dog’s ass once in a while; NBA Star Carmelo Anthony gave it shot last year.

That’s My Houseboy’s Dope!

The true clueless mules are usually women set up by their boyfriends. (Snoop Dogg was accused of doing this to a concert promoter.) Men usually do this because there’s no chivalry in the drug business, and because someone who doesn’t know she’s carrying isn’t going to bust out in a mad sweat when she gets pulled over, or run screaming from the ticket counter when the agent asks her if she had any help packing her bags. Also, judges are more ready to believe a woman was unknowingly carrying for a man—sexism Drug War style, but you will not be complaining. The trouble with the That’s not my cocaine defense, aside from the fact that no one really buys it, is that it will probably require the owner of the drugs to come down and take the weight for you—yes, the same hero who stashed his dope in your drawers.

Fleeing Dope Note:

Finally, be aware that you can’t willfully blind yourself to the dope. If you’re offered $10,000 to drive a rental car cross-country and leave it in the Hustler parking lot in West Hollywood no questions asked, you will get busted for possessing whatever was in the trunk, even if you never actually knew what was in there. And since no one gets a joint or two transported cross-county for ten G’s, you will probably be carrying enough to be charged with distribution (see Stepping Behind the Scale,).

WHOSE DOPE IS THIS IN THE BUSHES?

Even if a cop hasn’t actually witnessed you throw the dope away and refrains from using his License to Lie, you can still get busted in the great outdoors just being near dope if it appears that that’s where you were keeping it or where you tried to ditch it. The judge is going to look at the circumstantial evidence when he’s deciding whom to blame.

The Circumstantial Dope Ditty:

STEPPING BEHIND THE SCALE

POSSESSION WITH INTENT TO DISTRIBUTE

Like boxers finally carted out of the ring drooling on their nappies and slurring like winos, dealers usually retire the hard way: all the groupies gone and their defense attorney as their only friend, assuming they can keep the drug money coming. Sooner or later the dealers all need deeper legal advice and a lot more bread than the fourteen bucks that you plunked down for Busted! Breaking the First Commandment, Thou Shall Not Deal, changes everything.

That said, getting charged with distribution—stepping behind the scale, as the cocaine kids call dealing weight in the Bronx—is not as simple as not selling dope. Anytime you get nabbed possessing drugs, the cop who busted you is going to decide whether to charge you with possession for your personal use, or with possession with intent to distribute; cops always err on the side of distribution because a felony bust looks a lot better on their résumés, and there are always court hearings for felony busts. Cops like going to these hearings because they’re usually paid overtime for time spent on the witness stand (see The Suppression Hearing,).

The first thing the cop, and ultimately the DA, is going to consider is the amount of dope you were carrying. What’s a personal use amount? The short answer is virtually any amount of drugs that you can convince a judge or jury that you were planning on smoking yourself or with select company. Reason, unfortunately, plays a role here. If you’re apprehended with more dope than you and all your wasted friends could smoke in a lifetime, Johnnie Cochran reincarnated will have trouble making a convincing argument that you were planning on giving it a try all the same. As we have seen before, however, desperate defendants are always willing to give it shot. What the hell?

Devoted Dope Ditty:

But you don’t need a thousand pounds of pot to get busted on distribution charges. It’s all about the circumstantial evidence. Consider the scene at Catherine Berkland’s crib when the cops dropped by: Plastic bags lay all over the place on the floor of the bathroom; the toilet was still in the process of flushing; and there was a white powder in the sink and toilet bowl, later determined to be methamphetamine. There was a long trail of coin bags, used to package methamphetamine, leading from the place where [Catherine’s roommate] had first been spotted into the bathroom. The officers found quantities of marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, hashish oil, a trace of cocaine, methamphetamine, packaging materials, scales, $4,000 in cash, a scanner used for monitoring police radios, a set of brass knuckles, and a zip gun (a firearm not immediately recognizable as such) in the residence.

That was how Catherine’s judge described it, anyway. (For more on the dope-flushing strategy she employed, see The Race to the Toilet,) Catherine actually had very little drugs in the house—quantities and traces of drugs are criminal justice lingo for none—but once you throw in a set of brass knuckles, a zip gun, and a scanner, it’s hard to argue that you were just going to party with some rambunctious girlfriends.

Catherine’s and the Coptics’ pain is retold herein to illustrate a couple of obvious distribution scenarios. You can and will get charged with distribution under far less blatant circumstances. The following tips are aimed at keeping you on the right side of the scale.

If You’re Keeping Dope Around…

THE KIDDY CORNER

No one takes the whole DARE thing more seriously than the criminal justice system, so the Second Commandment must be religiously observed if you like your freedom and have any regard for your karma. Like dealing, everything changes once the kids are involved. The Drug War will simply have no mercy on you. The sentences get longer, the Fourth Amendment (your right to be free of illegal searches and seizures) gets even flimsier, and you are less likely to get bail. Flip back to the very thin film Dope Ditty; the judge was careful to point out that Mr. Scott was busted as he was leaving a teenage dance club. Nobody said it, but you can believe that the thirty years he got hooked up with had something to do with the clientele he was apparently servicing.

SHE LOOKED EIGHTEEN TO ME, OFFICER!

If you’re a teen (or into teens), be aware that if you’re caught supplying anyone underage with dope, be it for love, for friendship, or for show-and-tell, the DA will go crazy on you.

In California, for example, possessing a fatty is punishable by a $100 fine. Passing that fatty to a minor is punishable by three to seven years in prison, even if she’s seventeen and you’re eighteen. And the first thing any smart little defendant who gets busted will do is turn you in. These statutes are the same as statutory-rape laws. It doesn’t matter if the fourteen-year-old looked like Sandra Day O’Connor with a hangover and told you she was seventy-five, you are on the hook for furnishing a minor with illegal drugs. Period.

Don’t even consider involving a minor in anything that could be construed as behind-the-scale work. In Colorado, for example, you can get up to life in jail for employing anyone under twenty-five years old in the drug trade, even if it’s the family business.

Dad’s Dope Ditty:

SCHOOLHOUSE ROCKS

Live in an urban area? Take a stroll around the hood to see how far you are from your local learning institution, or, put another way, how close you are to a mighty drug bust. Every state has school-zone statutes on the books to keep the kiddies away from drugs. (Not that they’re working; it’s easier for high school students to buy weed than smokes or booze, and most can score within a couple of hours.)

Effectiveness aside, school-zone statutes will drop you down a hole for dealing or possessing drugs near school grounds; anywhere from a thousand feet to a couple of miles away will do. In Alabama, for example, you get two to twenty years for selling coke, but no matter how much time you get, five years are always added for selling it within three miles of any school, or any school property, even if students never use it.

Nor does the school have to be a traditional institution for the extra pain: ITT Technical Institute counts, and virtually any other location where our nation’s disaffected youth wile away their dull lives—video arcades, public pools, etc.—are usually thrown in. In most states it doesn’t matter if the school was closed when the dirty deed went down, or whether you were even aware that there was a school anywhere nearby.

THE COMMUNITY DOPE

Constructive Possession

Most people don’t sit around doing lines or rolling on E by themselves. If you do, you can safely skip this section and perhaps consider a spot of counseling. The law recognizes that most people who party, party together, and it has come up with a typically simple solution: bust everyone. The cops aren’t going to pull over a smoke-filled car with burning blunts in the ashtray and try to figure out whom they’re going to bust. Nor will they burst into parties where the hookers are passing out cocaine and the guests are waving light sticks at each other and spend a lot of time sorting out suspects. The cops are going to bust ’em all and let the DA sort ’em out.

Whether it’s in your own house, at a party, or in a car, your goal when caught hanging about Community Dope is not to be one of the bustees. Failing that, to be one of the little fish the DA throws out because you knew enough to put some distance between you and the drugs. All that it takes to get busted when there’s dope on the premises is proof that you could have had some if you wanted some (known in the biz as exercising dominion and control over the drugs).

Dealers also frequently fall victim to this type of possession charge because they’ve usually been busted enough to learn to try to distance themselves from their dope (see Limbaugh Lesson #3,). Former dealer and current